on the side…mystery, old world lore, religious fervor, and of course, politics

Tag Archives: Sunni

Hillary Clinton said this while on her book tour: “These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them….”

It pains me to no end to agree with her, but I must say a small part of what she said last week made sense. Let me say first that I am taking the point out of context. Clinton was discussing the Taliban Five swap, that day’s shit-show that captured our attention. And by design, this swap took our focus off all the other shit-shows in Washington, D.C. This was true until this past week when the Invasion of Iraq began.

Now we have a new shit-show, and this one involves a barbaric jihadist militant group on steroids to worry about. And just like our leaders in Washington, D.C., we were finding out about this newest threat on television. So now we have it clear as daylight in front of us…again. Our entire government was caught off-guard, and America, after we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and lost 4,486 lives to build a new Iraq, we have egg on our face…again.

But I don’t want to delve into all those silly questions we should already know but probably never will figure out: Why didn’t we finalize that U.S.-Iraq forces agreement with al-Maliki? Why didn’t we know about this ISIS threat earlier, and how will ISIS embolden other Islamic terrorists? Why does Iran all of a sudden care so much about Iraq, and how will the United States respond to all this madness? The reason is we all know the dirty truth: the inside-the-beltway pundits and press have already callously lined up to answer these questions for us…just so we never do know the truth.

So, to cut to the chase, I want to know one thing: What will the Islamic world do this time to save itself? Between you and me, I fear the entire Middle East has reached the tipping point. The United States and the rest of the “non-Islamic” world are sick of dealing with the mess, and no one in his right mind will put more boots back on the ground. This includes the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, or the rest of the Global “G8” powers.

This simple fact leaves the Middle East to sink or swim…and that part really worries me, so let me tell you why by answering a question I wish more people would ask: Are we still living in a post-Cold War world?

“Hell, yes,” I’d answer every time and never blink an eye, believing in a scary way that we may actually be in the final, most volatile stage.

Samuel P. Huntington, in his mid-1990s book The Clash of Civilizations, suggested the post-Cold War world would return to a world where future conflicts would originate from clashes between religious civilizations. During my learning years, I was forced to write papers on Huntington’s thesis and research over twenty times; I read his book over five times and still have it today, resting peacefully far away from Washington, D.C. inside my safe and secure Atlanta home. Unfortunately, those who worked in Washington during and post-Cold War have moved on and the new policymakers are looking at the world through a progressive “Haves and Have Nots” prism that blames the United States for all inequality in the world. I’d like to ask these children why they despise capitalism so much and how they think the never-ending flow of…our money…will change minds that were made up hundreds of years ago. I’d like to ask them whether they’ve ever read Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, but I already know the answer. You see, safe and secure societies have never changed. They’ve always been based on a small minority that has everything and a majority that has nothing. America, for the time being, just ended up in the minority, and it may sound harsh to hear and it’s in no means Christian to say, but it’s true: The majority doesn’t have to like you, but they do have to fear you. So what can be done when that fear is gone? My answer is simply: that fallout was planned by design. It’s going to happen. Watch it from a distance and hope for the best.

Now back to Hillary’s statement, the one I dreadfully agree with. The Sunni and the Shiite are going to have to fight this one alone, beginning with the Sunni-backed ISIS jihadist against Shiite-backed Iraq and very likely Iran. The call to arms by the Grand Ayatollah has already aggravated the Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide and this is what separates us from them. They will never fight for their country and certainly not for their corrupted governments. But they will fight for their Ayatollah, the grand mosque, and other sacred sites. The most brutal fanatic will win, but they will turn on each other eventually; as much as they hate the West, they hate the barbaric “sharia” regimes more. The last call to arms nearly tore Iraq apart in 2006 and 2007. The one just made may very likely tear apart the entire region, so I hope my final point will resonate with everyone: we’ve been beaten in our own game; we’re the dummies; those living in the caves are the wise ones. Our U.S. military fought itself into a frenzy by trying to protect us as our own leaders in Washington raised the white flag. It spied on its own people, using social media and tapping phones, instead of focusing on real problems, and it is likely to release the remaining militants from Guantanamo to reap more havoc, this time on its own people. Hillary was right; she knew this was coming and so did the rest of our leaders in Washington. The fact that none of them will blink an eye when the real bloodletting starts is the travesty and national disgrace…so welcome to Middle East’s new normal.

So what are our must dos? Here are my top six:

1) Get the children of out Washington, D.C. once and for all. This includes the White House, State Department, NSC, CIA, DIA, DHS, NSA, and anywhere else that is responsible for our national security.

2) Put old-school intelligence back into intelligence. There is no excuse for writing intelligence reports by listening to the news, and we need to manage the fallout; what is happening in the Middle East doesn’t have to happen elsewhere…India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, and North Africa.

3) Repatriate Christians in the Middle East to sectarian nations and secure a new Kurdish state.

4) Build the Keystone Pipeline.

5) Secure the U.S. borders.

6) Turn your television on and watch from a distance. The newest shit-show will be rated “R” for Extreme Violence, Horrific Hatred, Heart-Wrenching, and Painful to Watch. Our President has decided to watch it play out on television; Hillary Clinton has decided too and so have Chuck Hagel, Susan Rice, and the rest of our leaders in Washington…so why shouldn’t we?